“The articles published today and in coming days are based on thousands of United States embassy cables, the daily reports from the field intended for the eyes of senior policy makers in Washington. The New York Times and a number of publications in Europe were given access to the material several weeks ago and agreed to begin publication of articles based on the cables online on Sunday. The Times believes that the documents serve an important public interest, illuminating the goals, successes, compromises and frustrations of American diplomacy in a way that other accounts cannot match”

Victor Davis Hanson: Morality and Leaks – “We won’t know the full extent of the diplomatic archives for days, but so far the particulars seem as embarrassing as they are underwhelming.

“We are told that the Obama administration by hook or crook wanted to close Guantanamo, that occasionally U.S. diplomats spy, that Pakistan is unstable, that Saudi Arabia is duplicitous in wanting America to bell the Iranian nuclear cat while their elites subsidize al-Qaeda, that we are planning for the eventuality of North Korea’s fall, that China conspires against Google, that “Libya’s Gaddafi had a hot blonde “nurse” with him, that the U.S. military was critical of the Brits, that the Royal Family is sometimes naughty, and all number of other things we would expect diplomatic missions to hear, gossip, editorialize, and intrigue about — and which usually find their way into the mainstream press sooner or later.

“The danger of releasing these confidential diplomatic cables, then, is probably not their content per se but the destruction of the trust and reputations of many American diplomats who on future occasions, in far more critical contexts, will lament the loss of their access, friendships and credibility.”

Byron York: Portland – PC Town Rejected the FBI

“In 2005, leaders in Portland, Oregon, angry at the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror, voted not to allow city law enforcement officers to participate in a key anti-terror initiative, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. On Friday, that task force helped prevent what could have been a horrific terrorist attack in Portland. Now city officials say they might re-think their participation in the task force — because Barack Obama is in the White House.

“Reading the FBI affidavit describing Islamist terror suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud’s plan to bomb a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square is a chilling experience. Mohamud, a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen who attended Oregon State University, told undercover FBI agents he dreamed of performing acts of jihad in which hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans would die. “Do you remember when 9/11 happened when those people were jumping from skyscrapers?” Mohamud asked the agents, according to the affidavit. “I thought that was awesome.”

Illegals: DREAMs (revised)

Luis Perez is 29 years old, he has a law degree, and he cannot practice law because he’s an illegal in California where his predicament is blamed on the rest of us. He’s also a poster child for the DREAM Act.

The plan is to give in-state tuition rates to illegals who have completed three years of American high school. This is approximately equal to earning time in our military that counts towards citizenship. Or to the years of paperwork and requirements for traditional immigration. It filters in the smarter students for retention and advancement in American society and filters out the less verbally or mathematically talented.

It won’t work because American schools often have a liberal bias as well as a practical one.

First, teachers usually dislike a second year with a nonproductive student. Second, teachers can feel “guilty” for holding back a student whose background is thought to justify substandard performance. “Give him another chance!”

The average Mexican IQ, however, is estimated to be 88 (A score of 85 once earned you the label of “mentally retarded.” 72 still does.)

There are several outcomes from DREAM:

– A group of aliens who were bumped along even though they could not do the work.

– A group of aliens who believe they did the work but were not advanced because of their background, skin color, language, or our not liking them.

– And least important, a group of qualified Anglos who were excluded from tuition breaks.

Let’s NOT do this again….

(Thomas Sowell documents the inequities that follow preferential admission policies by top schools for unqualified students. Both the student and their classmates acquire a layer of cynicism about how things work. Further, the less-able students, who would have been competitive in a different school, demand courses that suit their talents. Strange courses evolve and a diploma from a prestige school becomes either a joke or a ticket to more failure in a prestige job. See Sowell, Thomas. 1993/2003, Inside American Education: The Decline, the Deception, the Dogmas. NY: Simon & Schuster.)

Byron York: Health Care (from 11/22)

“If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

“Obama made that particular pledge in a speech to the American Medical Association in June 2009, but he said the same thing, with slight variations, dozens of times during the health care debate. And now, exactly eight months after he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, we’re seeing just how empty the president’s promise was.

“The New York Times reports there is a “growing frenzy of mergers” in the health care field in which hospitals and other care providers, pressured by the new law’s provisions, are joining forces to save money. “Consumer advocates fear that the health care law could worsen some of the very problems it was meant to solve,” the paper reports, “by reducing competition, driving up costs and creating incentives for doctors and hospitals to stint on care, in order to retain their cost-saving bonuses.”

“The Obama administration’s answer to the problem will undoubtedly be more regulation. But the wave of mergers is just one of many signs of trouble with the new law.

“For example, we know that the government’s Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has found that the new law will increase health care costs, rather than reduce them, in the coming decade. We know that cuts in Medicare, with the money saved going to pay for expanding coverage to the poor, will jeopardize seniors’ access to care. We know the law will make it impossibly expensive for companies that currently offer bare-bones health coverage to low-income employees to keep doing so. We know several corporations are taking giant write-downs because the bill will increase the cost of providing prescription drug coverage to retired employees. And perhaps most important, we know the law offers an enormous incentive for employers who currently provide coverage to workers to stop doing so, sending those workers to buy coverage in government-subsidized health care exchanges.

“In sum, what the law means for millions of Americans is: No matter what the president said, if you like the coverage you have now, you can’t keep it.”

South Korea’s Dance

“South Korea (AP) – South Korea’s military said Monday that new artillery drills planned for the front-line island targeted in last week’s deadly North Korean bombardment were postponed, hours after authorities on the island announced the exercises.

“Similar live-fire maneuvers by South Korean troops one week earlier triggered the North’s bombardment that decimated parts of Yeonpyeong Island, killed four people and drew return fire in a clash that set the region on edge.

“The new drills originally planned for Tuesday could have had even higher stakes: South Korean and American warships are currently engaged in separate military exercises in nearby waters.”

North Korea: Gordon Chang’s Analysis

Chang this morning explained some basics on Bill Bennett’s radio show: North Korea’s army dictates the politics of its leader; North Korea’s leader is ill and his son has something to prove. (They, too, believe in making a crisis more acute.) He also reminded us of Kissinger’s observation that in a world obsessed with peace, any terrorist will dominate…

Regression to the Mean: North and South Korea; Palestine and Israel (revised)

Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet observed that repetition of events eliminates extreme scores. For example, throwing the dice many times gives you averages that reflect not your “hot hand” but the actual distribution of dots on the cubes. Francis Galton noticed the same effect for human measurements: extreme characteristics of parents are less noticeable in each generation of their children and grandchildren. Really “dumb” parents tend to have children smarter than either parent; really “smart” parents tend to have children less gifted than either parent. (Toynbee noticed something similar in the rise and fall of cultures but didn’t recognize it with the same concepts.)

This effect is called “regression to the mean” and churches and political parties benefit when they respect it and fill pews and member lists with entitled and helpless people.

Nowadays, we complain that North Korea fires rockets into South Korea but we don’t do much about it; we also justify and send money to the Palestinians who fire rockets into Israel. The average IQ in Palestine – and much of the world – is about 80; it is about 100 in Israel and in her feckless partner, the United States.

Economic success of a nation is related to the average intelligence of its inhabitants. So are the average rates for having children and for suicide.

Bottom line: The 80s win as they now do in sanctuary cities, much of our southwest, and the Middle East.

Asra Nomani – The Daily Beast: An American Muslim for Profiling

“As an American Muslim, I’ve come to recognize, sadly, that there is one common denominator defining those who’ve got their eyes trained on U.S. targets: MANY of them are Muslim—like the Somali-born teenager arrested Friday night for a reported plot to detonate a car bomb at a packed Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in downtown Portland, Oregon.

“We have to talk about the taboo topic of profiling because terrorism experts are increasingly recognizing that religious ideology makes terrorist organizations and terrorists more likely to commit heinous crimes against civilians, such as blowing an airliner out of the sky. Certainly, it’s not an easy or comfortable conversation but it’s one, I believe, we must have.”

Fouad Ajami: Afghanistan

“’They do give us bags of money—yes, yes, it is done, we are grateful to the Iranians for this.’ This is the East, and baksheesh is the way of the world, Hamid Karzai brazenly let it be known this week. The big aid that maintains his regime, and keeps his country together, comes from the democracies. It is much cheaper for the Iranians. They are of the neighborhood, they know the ways of the bazaar.

“The remarkable thing about Mr. Karzai has been his perverse honesty.”

Jonathan Martin, Politico: The South Rises…

“Protected by a potent mix of gerrymandering, pork, seniority and a friends-and-neighbors electorate, Democratic state representatives and senators managed to survive through the South’s GOP evolution — the Reagan years, the Republican landslide of 1994 and George W. Bush’s two terms. Yet scores of them retired or went down in defeat earlier this month. And at least 10 more across three states have changed parties since the elections, with rumors swirling through state capitols of more to come before legislative sessions commence in January. Facing the prospect of losing their seats through reapportionment — if not in the next election — others will surely choose flight over fight.”

GOP Transition, The Hill: 1490 Suggestions

Since the website GOPLeader.gov/NewMajority went live three weeks ago, the transition team has received 1,490 suggestions from the public, according to spokesman Brendan Buck, who added that he has been “very pleased with the quality and thoughtfulness of the ideas.”

Herman Cain, Daily Caller: On Your Taxes

“If the Democrats block the attempts of Republicans to permanently extend the current tax rates, taxes will rise for the first time in 14 years! And this will certainly stall economic recovery, as the Heritage Foundation projects that letting these rates expire would cost an average of 799,000 jobs annually from 2013-2019. If the Democrats continually promise that their number one focus is job creation, why are they insisting upon blocking legislation that would do exactly that?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment

Name *

Email *

Website

Sign me up for the newsletter

Sign up for our newsletter!

CATS is a conservative publication, almost free of advertising, and has appeared at least three times per week for the last six years. It consists of abstracts from the wider press, links to original sources, and sometimes, remarks by Jim Brody.